It is a chilly Saturday morning, but inside the Ellis residence, it feels warm and welcoming – because Juanika Ellis is the one who answers the door.

She invites a stranger in and spreads her arms for a hug. Monta and Juanika Ellis' little girl, Myla, is still in pajamas and fiddling with an iPad. Juanika gets the 4-year-old to look up long enough to say hello, and now offers coffee or bottled water. Juanika seems to be stalling. The man of the house, the Indiana Pacers’ biggest offseason acquisition and the subject of this story, is somewhere inside this 15,000-square-foot lakefront mansion on Indianapolis' Far Northside, and he’s taking his time.

“Mmm hmm,” are the first mutterings from Monta Ellis.

He shuffles in wearing a tank top, long shorts and socks. His coffee mug honors the Dallas Cowboys, his favorite team and the reason he nearly messed up his chances with the love of his life. He’s walking around the living room’s perimeter, taking a measure of the scene before deciding where to settle. He ends up near the kitchen, where he presses a button. The motorized shades roll up and a wall of windows appears. The sun is peeking through the clouds, revealing a sparkling lake and a row of million-dollar homes.

It’s cold out, but a good day for fishing. For Ellis, any day is a good day for fishing.

As a boy growing up in a turbulent world, Ellis found peace on the water. He’s almost 30, and fishing still soothes his soul. Thank God for this chilly day – because this, finally, makes Ellis open up.

“That’s good; all the fish will come up to the top now,” Ellis says, gazing out the window and contemplating the chill.

Cooler waters mean the fish will come out of hiding. The waters in Monta Ellis’ world have been cooling, too.

***

As a boy in Jackson, Miss., Monta tore the bottoms off milk crates outside his grandparents’ home on Horseshoe Circle Lane and fastened those crates to wooden poles. His basketball hoops. Games with his best friend got so good that boys from the neighborhood asked to play, too. When the milk crates became too raggedy, no problem – there was always grandma’s garbage can. Older brother Antwain Ellis, his basketball hero, taught him this: No matter what, keep playing. Love this game. And the little boy listened. Even when his idol fell.

Who knows, maybe Antwain could’ve been the first Ellis in the NBA, but he wandered into a life of missteps; his mind ravaged by dangerous substances and his once promising basketball career irreparably damaged. Watching this, young Monta was hardened, and forever changed. Still he remembered: Play on.

“Basketball was my escape,” Ellis now says. “I really didn’t have a childhood at the time then because I locked the outside world out.”

Ellis now has a four-year, $44 million contract. This summer, even after undergoing a previously unreported surgical procedure on his right knee – which should be considered his "good" knee – he is trusted to add the jet fuel to the Pacers’ smaller, faster lineup. He has a great responsibility, but the greater challenge may be to stop hiding inside the surly fortress he has built and open up to the world.

He turns 30 Monday. More than ever, he wants to rediscover the lost little boy from Jackson.

"Let’s go, bluuuue," Ellis bellows in his raspy, southern deep-fried inflection. His is the loudest voice during Pacers’ practices, and he uses it to joke, to laugh, to sing – yes, Monta Ellis can carry a tune. His grandfather sang in a gospel group, The Bright Stars. Ellis and his cousins continued the tradition and formed the Junior Bright Stars, singing spirituals in tuxedos.

"These boys weren’t no rudy poo now. They could sing,” says Jonas James, who coached Monta in middle school and high school. “Once they get to singing ‘His Eye Is On The Sparrow,’ the spirit would get to moving.”

Singing is the second family talent.

Basketball is the Ellis birthright.

Rosa Ellis starred at Lanier High School, played junior college basketball, then left for Texas. But she had to give up some dreams; a single mom raising her three boys right back in the place she had escaped.

According to a study by Education Week, Mississippi ranks 51st, even behind Washington, D.C., in K-12 student achievement. The International Centre for Prison Studies and the Prison Policy Initiative says Mississippi has a higher incarceration rate per capita than China and Russia combined. In the city of Jackson, often referred to as “Jackistan” for its violence, more than 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Antwain is the oldest boy. He knew he had to watch out for Monta.

“I had to be a big brother, man,” Antwain says. “I’ve seen a lot of stuff that he couldn’t see his mom going through. ... I wasn’t just going to leave him out like that.

“I told him when he gets bored, go build a basketball goal. Every day we wake up, he wanted to play basketball.”

When Monta was five, Antwain put a spongy Nerf ball in his hands. What he learned in practice, Antwain brought home to Monta.

“He would have us out there running line drills,” recalls Marlon Milton, Monta’s childhood best friend.

While Antwain sprouted to be a 6-8, do-everything prospect and helped Lanier win two state basketball championships, Monta was a string bean.

“He was skin and bones. There was nothing to him,” says Merrill Thomas, Monta’s seventh-grade science teacher. “If you look at him, he would just break.”

Which makes the string bean’s athletic prowess even more extraordinary. Monta was the No. 1 tennis player at Rowan Middle School; legend has it he never dropped a match. He was the secret weapon on two-point conversions in football; just throw the fade because nobody could outjump Monta. Also, he was the best soccer goalie Thomas has ever coached.

When Thomas, a woman, was named the eighth-grade boys’ head soccer coach, the kids laughed, but Monta said he’d play for her and protect the net. Only four goals slipped through the entire season.

Above all, Monta was a savant in basketball. Even before Monta won 129 games and two state titles of his own, finished No. 2 in Mississippi preps history with 4,167 points and was named co-national Player of the Year by Parade Magazine, Lanier teammate Isaac Wells saved Ellis’ cell number under a special name. Whenever Ellis called Wells’ Nokia flip phone, this name popped up: Out of High School.

It was a prediction – right on, too – that Monta would make the preps-to-pros leap.

“After working out with him, man, it was unbelievable,” Wells says. “The talent he had, the hunger.

“He was different. He was a different breed.”

Just like his older brother. That 360-degree spin move, the pull-up jumper, even “the temper that I have at times,” Monta says. “It’s Antwain in a 6-3 body.”

“My brother had everything,” Ellis proclaims, and saying this just one time isn’t strong enough: “My brother had everything. Everything.”

Then, Antwain lost everything.

***

Antwain Ellis hasn’t held down a serious job since 2005, the same year his little brother was drafted by the Golden State Warriors. He’ll turn 35 early next year but doesn’t own a phone. So on this weekday morning, Antwain, who hasn’t left Jackson, has to borrow his mother’s cell. He says he has time to talk.

“I hurt myself a little bit,” Antwain says. “I’ve got to heal.”

It’s been eight years since his high school best friend was shot and stabbed to death, and Antwain is still healing. The body of a young black male found inside an abandoned house was more than just a cliché of life in Jackistan. It was a tragedy that damaged Antwain. For so long, he was the rock for his two younger brothers. Then, he was set adrift.

The Ellises speak of this time hesitantly, the way families do when protecting a loved one. Rosa describes it as “the little incident that happened with his older brother.” Monta deems it as Antwain’s “little issue.” But the truth is, Antwain quit basketball and struggled to find his footing.

He smoked weed filled with embalming fluid; the family says someone poisoned those joints. His behavior changed. Sometimes he’d be the happy, smiling Antwain of old. Other times he’d talk about how a bull rushed out of his mouth.

The dramatic change frightened his little brother. Monta was 11 or 12, but he vividly recalls sitting in his grandparents’ backyard and talking with Antwain when this happened:

“He was talking normal, then all of a sudden the conversation just flipped,” Monta says. “He scared me so bad, I started crying. I broke all the way down and I told my mom I don’t ever want to talk to my brother ever again. The things that he said and he was talking about, it was devastating and it hurt me so bad.

“I cried many a nights about the things my brother was going through.”

In 2008, Antwain was shot twice in the back. But long before hitting that rock bottom, the dream of Antwain playing in the pros had passed away. Friends and family turned their backs. The little brother never abandoned his hero, but went into bunker mode. His life orbited around Horseshoe Circle Lane, Lanier High School and the Ross Barnett Reservoir brimming with catfish and crappie. “To me," Monta says, "fishing was – to me fishing is peaceful.”

To hold on to serenity, Monta shut out outsiders. The walls went up. He built them high.

“People turned on (Antwain). Everything in his life made me look at life different,” he says, his stare cold and distant. “It was tough. It put me in a shell. I really didn’t have a childhood at the time then because I locked the outside world out.”

***

The walls didn’t come down in California, where Ellis was the shoot-first thorn stubbornly pricked into Don Nelson’s side.

These days, Nelson has retired to the shores of Hawaii, where he is unplugged from the NBA transactions wire and unburdened by old beefs with former players. Still, his bouts with Ellis are well known. Nelson inherited Ellis in his second year in the league and coached him until the 2009-10 season.

“Well, the first thing that pops into my head is that he’s …” Nelson starts, and you’re expecting to hear a sort of basketball pejorative: selfish scorer, one-dimensional ball hog. And yet, Nelson makes a surprising declaration.

“…a terrific player,” he finishes.

Then comes the verbal asterisk: “Right now.”

“He was hard to coach when he was young; there’s no question in my mind about that,” Nelson continues. “He was very difficult to coach early. Like I said, single-minded. He thought he could do everything, like a lot of young players.”

Today, Ellis recognizes this reputation, understanding how he may have been viewed as “hard-headed.” Then in 2007, he fell in love with Juanika and started to change.

The two met at a party and somehow got into a lively debate about the Chicago Bears and his beloved Cowboys. “He was being a knucklehead,” Juanika says. Still, she saw past this – Juanika, well established in her career as a Memphis police officer, did not learn Monta played in the NBA until weeks into their relationship – and they’ve been together ever since.

“He needed to become a man and I think the best thing that ever happened to him was when he got married… and had his first baby,” Nelson says. Monta Jr. was born six years ago. “Then his whole life kind of started to mature and he became less selfish and more of a team guy and more of a leader. It took him a little while to get there, but (the Pacers) get the full package.”

Ellis, whose left knee was repaired after high school, underwent surgery on the other knee before the start of free agency. The procedure was described as "minor," but after 11 years of wear and tear on those legs, the news could've cooled off the Pacers. But the team still wanted the missing piece to the new spread offense. So on the first official day of free agency, the Pacers strongly went after Ellis.

Inside The Capital Grille, Pacers coach Frank Vogel looked Juanika in the eyes and stressed that her husband was "perfect for what we’re trying to get accomplished."

"Paul George is going to be back near strength, or at full strength," Vogel said, continuing his pitch to the Ellises. "You’re the guy that’s going to make his transition to the 4 (power forward position) work. This is not something we would even want to do without somebody of your caliber scoring the basketball and the speed you have.”

Monta’s walls are slowly chipping. For years, he did not have a relationship with his biological father, Marcella Singleton, but has since mended past hurts. The father-son bond has rehabilitated to the point that Singleton appears from downstairs of the Ellises’ home.

“He’s learning,” says Juanika, who persuaded Monta to speak to his father. Juanika hopes Monta can let in more people. “He’s a good person. He has a good heart but (be) more receptive. You always have to be cautious but (let) more people into his life (and) circle.”

He’s trying to open up more. Antwain may still be recovering in life, but he's clean and sober and doing much better. With the worst days in the rear view, a few months ago, Monta called his mom and finally revealed how much Antwain’s spiral affected him. Rosa Ellis does not want to share details. It hurts too much. The waters are still a bit too warm for her.

“Glad it was just a phone conversation,” she says. “If it had to be a face-to-face thing, I think it would’ve been a little bit more dramatic and devastating.”

But now in Indianapolis, the waters are calm. Ellis curls up on a love seat, his feet dangling off the side. His boat is docked outside and Ellis has remained patient and friendly with his guest long enough. It’s cold outside and the fish are rising.

“Today,” Ellis proclaims, “will be a great day to get out there and try the water.”